I started the Dodge and headed downtown. On North Capitol, between Florida and New York avenues, the people of the neighborhood were out, sitting on trash cans and stoops, their movements slow and deliberate. Later, passing through the Hill, the sidewalks were empty, the residents cocooned in their air-conditioned homes. Then in Southeast, by the projects, the people were outdoors again, shouting and laughing, the drumbeat of bass and the sputter of engines and the smell of reefer and tobacco smoke heavy in the air.
I turned onto Half and drove into a darkened landscape of line and shadow, animation fading to architecture. And then it was only me, winding the car around short, unlit streets, past parked trucks and fenced warehouses and silos, to the intersection of Potomac and Half.
I pulled behind a Dumpster and killed the engine. There was the tick of the engine, no other sound. A rat ran from beneath the Dumpster and scurried under the fence of an empty lot. I lit a cigarette, hit it deep. I had a look around.
The knock-over warehouse sat still and abandoned, no cars in the lot, a police tape, wilted and fallen, formed around the concrete stoop.
Across the street, near the steel door of the second warehouse, two LIGHTING AND EQUIPMENT vans and the Buick Le Sabre were parked behind a fence topped with barbed wire.
I looked up at the east face of the building: A fire escape led to a second-story sash window. Behind the window, a pale yellow light glowed faintly from the depths of a hall. I dragged on my cigarette. Ten minutes later, I lit another. Through the second-story window, a shadow passed along the wall. The shadow disintegrated, and then it was just the pale yellow light.
I pitched my cigarette and stepped out of my car. I crossed the street.
Putting my fingers through the fence, I climbed it, then got over the double row of barbs without a stick. I swung to the other side of the fence, got halfway down its face, and dropped to the pavement in a crouch. My palms were damp; I rubbed them dry on the side of my jeans. Staying in the crouch, I moved across the lot to the bricks of the building.
I touched the wall, put myself flat up against it. My heart pumped against the bricks. I could hear it in my chest, and the sound of my breathing, heavy and strained. Sweat burned my eyes and dripped down my back. I blinked the burn out of my eyes. I waited for everything to slow down.
The air moved in back of me as I stepped away from the wall. I started to turn around, stopped when something cool and metallic pressed against the soft spot behind my ear. Then the click of a hammer and the hammer locking down.
“Don’t shoot me,” I said.
Coley’s voice: “You came back. Damn, you know? I was hoping you would.”
“You don’t have to shoot me,” I said.
“You’ll live a little longer,” he said, “if you keep your mouth shut. You’d like to live a little while longer, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Coley pushed the muzzle in on my skin. “You alone?”
I nodded.
“Walk to the door,” Coley said.
He kept the gun against my head, put his hand on my shoulder, and pushed me along the wall to the steel door at the wall’s end. I looked up, saw the window at the top of the fire escape, saw that it was open-the only way out, if I got the chance. Then we were at the end of the wall.
Coley reached over my shoulder and knocked on the door.
“Listen to this,” he said with a chuckle. “My redneck friend Sweet, he’s gotten all jumpy and shit since you and your pretty sidekick fucked up his face.”
Sweet’s voice came from behind the door. “Yeah?”
“It’s Coley, man. Lemme in.”
“Prove it,” Sweet said.
“I’ll prove it all over your narrow ass. Open this motherfucker up. Right now.”
I stood there, staring at the door, unable to raise spit, not wanting the door to open.
“Open it, Sweet,” said Coley. “I got someone here you been wantin’ to see.”
The door opened. Coley pushed between my shoulder blades, and then we were inside. Sweet closed the door, slid a bolt and dropped it, and grinned. He turned the key on the lock and slipped the key in his pocket.
“My, my,” he said. The bruised side of his face had gone to purple and one eye drooped where the socket had caved. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt tucked into jeans. The knife-in-skull tattoo contracted on his tightly muscled, drug-thin forearm as he reached behind his back. He pulled his gun and lightly touched the barrel to my cheek. The gun was a. 22.
“My, my,” he said again.
“Let’s take him upstairs,” Coley said.
Sweet stroked at the hairs of his billy-goat beard. “Right.”
I walked between them down a hall that was empty, then into a large room crowded with garden tools and machinery. In the center of the room was an oak table and some chairs, where several men were seated. I could see a scale on the table, amid many bottles of beer, but I didn’t linger on the setup, and I didn’t look any of the men in the eye. Coley kept walking, and I stayed behind him. Once in a while, Sweet prodded me on the neck with the muzk wbut zle of the. 22, and when he did it, a couple of the men at the table laughed. One of them made a joke at Sweet’s expense, then all of them laughed at once, and Sweet prodded me harder and with more malice.
Coley cut left at an open set of stairs. I followed, relieved to be going out of the large room. We took the stairs, which were wooden and did not turn, up to the second floor, through an open frame, Sweet’s footsteps close behind me. Then we turned into another hall with offices of some kind on either side, the offices windowed in corrugated glass. Through one open door, I saw an old printing press, and I noticed that the outside windows had been bricked up. The hallway of corrugated glass ended and the room widened, shelved floor to ceiling, with paints, thinners, glass jars, brushes, and rags on the shelves. Then there was a bathroom, its outside window bricked up, and then an open door, where Coley turned and stepped inside. I followed, noticing before I did the window leading to the fire escape at the end of the hall. Sweet came into the room behind me and shut the door.
“Keep your gun on him,” Sweet said.
“Yes, sir,” Coley said, amused.
Sweet went to the door, connected a chain from door to frame, and slid the bolt. Coley held his gun, a. 38 Special, loosely in his hand and kept it pointed at my middle. He shifted his attention to Sweet, fixing the chain lock in place. Coley’s eyes smiled.
The room had no furniture except for a simple wooden chair turned on its side against a wall. An overflowed foil ashtray sat on the scarred hardwood floor, next to the chair. There had been a window once, but now the window was brick.
“Hold this,” Sweet said. He handed Coley the. 22. Coley took the gun, let that one hang by his side. “Good thing you were outside, Coley.”
“Heard that car of his. Some old muscle car with dual exhaust and shit. Makes one hell of a racket. Not the kind of ride you want to be usin’ when you’re trying to make a quiet entrance. Not too smart.”
“Yeah,” Sweet said. “Real stupid.”
Sweet came and stood in front of me, not more than three feet away. He shifted his shoulders, smiled a little, his vaguely Asian eyes disappearing with the smile. Alcohol smell came off him, and he stunk of day-old perspiration.
“You see what your partner did to my face?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I tried to think of something I had that they would want, something that would save my life. But I couldn’t think of one thing. The realization that they were going to kill me sucked the blood out of my face.
Sweet said, “Our friend here looks afraid. What you think, Coley? You think he looks afraid?”
“He does look a little pale,” Coley said.
“You afraid?” Sweet said, moving one step in. “Huh?”
I didn’t see the right hand. It was quick, without form or shape, and Sweet put everything into it. He hit me full on theme hei face, and the blow knocked me off my feet. My back hit the wall and my legs gave out. I slid down the wall to the floor.
“Whew,” said Coley.
Sweet walked across the room, bent over, grabbed a handful of my shirt. He pulled me up. The room moved, Sweet’s face splitting in two and coming back to one. He hit me in the face with a sharp right. Then he pulled back and hit me again, released his grip on my shirt. I fell to the floor. I swallowed blood, tasted blood in my mouth. Stars exploded in the blackness behind my eyes.
“Fuck!” I heard Sweet say. “I fucked up my fuckin’ hand on his face!”
“Go clean it up,” Coley said.
“The guy’s a pussy,” Sweet said. “Won’t even fight me back. I think maybe he likes it. What do you think, Coley? You think he likes it?”
“Go clean up your hand,” said Coley.
“Lock the door behind me,” Sweet said.
“Yeah,” Coley said, chuckling. “I’ll do that.”
Sweet left the room. When the door closed, I opened my eyes and got up on one elbow. Coley did not move to lock the door. I pushed myself over to the wall, sat up with my back against it. I looked at Coley, who stood in the center of the room, looking at me.
“You know,” Coley said, “we’re just gonna have to go on and kill you.”
I wiped blood from my face with a shaky hand. I stared at the floor.
“The reason I’m tellin’ you is, I hate to see a man go down without some kind of fight. That little redneck’s gonna come back in here, and if you let him, he’s gonna bitch-slap your ass all around. I mean, you’re dead, anyway. But it’s important, and shit, not to go out like some kind of punk. Know what I’m sayin’?”
I flashed on my drunken night by the river, hearing similar words spoken to Calvin Jeter. Spoken, I knew now, by Coley.
“Anyway, you got a little while,” Coley said. “I’m gonna ask you a few questions first, partly for business and partly just because I’m curious. Whether you answer or not, either way, I’m gonna have to put a bullet in your head tonight. Just thought you might like to know.”
There was a knock on the door.
“It’s open,” Coley said.
Sweet walked in, looked with disappointment at the chain swinging free on the frame. “I thought I told you to lock it.”
“Damn,” Coley said mockingly. “I damn sure forgot.”
Sweet looked at me. “Get up,” he said.
I stood slowly, gave myself some distance from the wall. I looked at Sweet’s right hand: swollen, the knuckles skinned and raw. He walked tw. h="27oward me, the inbred’s grin on his cockeyed face. He balled his right fist, but his right was done; I knew he wouldn’t use it, knew he would go with the left. He came in. He faked the right and dropped the left.
I moved to the side, bent my knees, and sprang up, swinging with the momentum. I whipped my open hand into his throat, snapping my wrist sharply at the point of contact, aiming for the back of his neck. My straight-open hand connected at his Adam’s apple, knocking him one step back. It felt as if a piece of Styrofoam had snapped.
Sweet grabbed at his throat with both hands. I went in, threw one deep right, followed through with it, dead square where his nose met the purple bruise of his face. Something gave with the punch; blood sprayed onto my shirt and Sweet went down. He fell to his side, moved a little, made choking sounds. Then he did not move at all. His hands dropped away from his throat.
“God damn,” Coley said. “You kill ’im?”
“No. You hit the Adam’s apple, the muscles around it contract, for protection. Cuts off your breathing for a few seconds. He’ll live.”
I heard Coley’s slow footsteps as he crossed the room. The footsteps swelled, then stopped.
“What’d you call that?” Coley said, close behind me. “That thing you did to his throat?”
“Ridge hand,” I said.
“Sweet’s gonna want to know,” Coley said, “when he wakes up.”
I felt a blunt shock to the back of my head and a short, sharp pain. The floor dropped out from beneath my feet, and I was falling, diving toward a pool of cool black water. Then I was in the black water, and there was only the water, and nothing left of me. Nothing left at all.
I woke from a dream of water.
“Some water,” I said, looking at their feet.
Coley’s shoes were between the legs of the chair, where he now sat. Sweet’s were near my face.
“Get him some water,” Coley said.
“Fuck a lotta water,” Sweet said.
Sweet’s shoes moved out of my field of vision. Then his knee dropped onto my back. I grunted as the knee dug into my spine. Sweet took my arm at the wrist and twisted it behind my back. I sucked at the air.
“Where’s your partner?” he said, his breath hot on my neck. “The one with the shotgun.”
“He’s gone,” I said, my voice high and unsteady.
“He’s gone,” Sweet said, mimicking my tone. He giggled and pushed my hand up toward my shoulders. He held my other hand flat to the hardwood floor. I tried to dig my nails into the wood.
“Where’s he gone to? ” Coley said.
“He split with his share of the money,” I said. “I don’t know where he went.”
Sweet jerked my arm up. I thought my arm would break if he pushed it farther. Then he pushed it farther. It hit a nerve, and the room flashed white. I tightened my jaw, breathed in and out rapidly through my nose.
“Uh,” I said.
“Say what?” Sweet said.
“Where is he?” Coley said.
My eyes teared up. Everything in front of me was slanted and soft.
“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “Coley, I don’t know.”
Coley said nothing.
Sweet released my arm. I rested the side of my face on the floor.
Then Sweet grabbed a handful of hair at the back of my head and yanked my head back up. He slammed my face into the floor. Blood spilled out of my nose and onto the wood. My mouth was wet with it; I breathed it in and coughed. I looked at the grain in the wood and the blood spreading over the grain.
“God damn, Sweet,” Coley said. “You’re just fuckin’ this man all up.”
Sweet twisted my hair, yanked my head up out of the blood. My eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. Purple clouds blinked in front of my eyes and I heard the gurgle of my own voice. I felt Sweet push down on the back of my head. I saw the wood rushing toward my face. The wood was black, like black water. I was in the water, and it was blessedly cool.
I opened my eyes.
I stared at the ceiling. It was a drop ceiling tiled in particleboard, with water damage in some of the tiles. Naked fluorescent fixtures hung from the ceiling. The light bore into my eyes.
I rolled onto my side. A Dixie cup full of water sat on the floor. Beyond the cup, a large roach crawled across the floor. It crawled toward Sweet’s boots. Past Sweet’s boots, Coley’s shoes were centered between the legs of the chair.
I got up, leaned on my forearm, and drank the water. I thought I would puke, but I did not. I dropped the cup on the floor and dragged myself over to the wall. I put my back against the wall, sat there. My nose ached badly and there was a ripping pain behind my eyes. I rubbed my hand on my mouth, flaked off the blood that had dried there. Coley was seated in the chair and Sweet stood with his back against the opposite wall. The. 22 dangled in Sweet’s hand, pointed at the floor. I looked at Coley. Coley moved his chin up an inch.
“Let’s kill him,” Sweet said. “You said to wait till he woke up. Well, he’s up.”
“Not yet. I want to get the word first.”
“Fuck the word. Let’s kill him now.” ove›
It went back and forth like that for a while. I started to feel a little better. Time passed, and I felt better still. The hate was doing it. What they had done to me and the thought of it were making me stronger.
I looked around the room: nothing to use as a weapon. Nothing on me but my car keys and a pack of matches. The keys were something; I could palm one, stab a key into Sweet’s eye when he came for me. I could hurt him in an awful way before he killed me. Somehow, I would do that. I would try.
“Go downstairs,” Coley said to Sweet. “Go down and call him. See what he wants to do.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sweet said. “You lock that door behind me, hear?”
“Sure thing.”
“I mean it,” Sweet said. “I’m gonna listen outside that door, make sure you do it.” And then to me: “I’ll be back in ten minutes. That’s how long you got to live. Ten minutes. You think about that.”
Sweet walked from the room. He shut the door, and Coley got up from his chair and went to the door. He jangled the chain around in the bolt, made sure Sweet heard the jangle from the other side of the door. Then he dropped the chain without locking it, chuckling as he walked back to his chair. He sat in the chair. His eyes moved to the door and then to me.
“Don’t get any ideas about that door,” Coley said. “ ’Cause this thirty-eight, at this range? You know I won’t miss.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. That thing with the door, I just like to rattle that little redneck’s cage a little bit, that’s all.” Coley grinned. “You fucked him up pretty good, too. ’Course, he did you right back. He manage to break that nose of yours?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But it’s been broke before.”
“Yeah.”
“I can see. Where you get that scar on your cheek, man?”
“Who cut off your ear?”
Coley showed me some teeth. “Some brother, in the showers at the Maryland State Pen. Looked at him the wrong way, I guess. All part of my rehabilitation and shit.”
“That where you two are from? Baltimore?”
“Yeah. Roundabout that way. Why?”
“Nothing.” I looked Coley in the eyes. “You killed Roland, and the Jeter kid, too. Didn’t you?”
“Jeter, huh? That’s what that boy’s name was? Well, I didn’t pull the trigger. I take no pleasure in that, though I’ll do it if it’s called for. Sweet was the triggerman. He likes it, you know. But I guess you could say I killed those boys, yeah.”
“Why?”
“We’re runnin’ a business here, and we got to protect that. Powder right into the projects, straight up. They turn it to rock and then they kill themselves over that shit. But our end, we keep it clean. Now, my boss, the man who bankrolls all this? He favors boys. Young brothers, that’s what he likes. Likes to watch ’em on the videotape. He had this idea, why not get them in here and put ’em on tape, use ’em to run powder on the side. I could have told him that shit wouldn’t go. One of them got scared and the other one got greedy. We just had to go on and do ’em both.”
“Who’s your boss?” I said.
Coley laughed. “Aw, go on. What you think this is, True Confessions and shit? Uh-uh, man, you’re just gonna have to check out not knowing all that. Now let me ask you somethin’.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why’d you knock us over? It wasn’t for the money, I know that.”
“I was just trying to save a kid’s life. I was only trying to get Roland out of there. He didn’t even know who we were.”
“He wasn’t with you?”
“No. You killed him for nothing.”
Coley shrugged. “He would’ve made me, anyway. Eventually, he would’ve done somethin’ to make me kill ’im. He was that way. Just difficult and shit.”
Coley used the barrel of his gun to scratch his forehead. I eased my keys out of my pocket, palmed them, let the tip of the longest one peek through the fingers of my fist.
“But you know,” Coley said, “that don’t explain why you came back tonight.”
“I wasn’t finished,” I said. “I needed to know the rest of it.”
“Now you know,” Coley said. “Kind of a silly thing to die for, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”
Coley exhaled slowly, looked at me sadly. “I seen you pull out those keys and shit. Why don’t you just slide them over here, man. I’ll make sure what gets done to you gets done to you quick.”
I tossed the keys to the center of the floor. Footsteps sounded in the hall, louder with each step. Coley got out of his chair, bent over, and picked up the keys. He slipped them in his pocket.
There was a knock on the door.
Coley smiled. “Come on in, Sweet. It’s open.”
The door opened.
Jack LaDuke stepped into the room, the Ithaca in his hands.
The smile froze on Coley’s face. “Goddamn,” he said. “God damn.”
LaDuke pointed his shotgun at Coley. Coley pointed the. 38 at LaDuke.
“LaDuke,” I said.
“Nick.”
LaDuke kicked the door shut behind him, kept his eyes and the shotgun on Coley. LaDuke was wearing his black suit and the solid black tie. I felt a rush of affection for him then; looking at him, I could have laughed out loud.
“Where you been?” I said.
“Office of Deeds, like you taught me.” Without moving anything but his free arm, he reached under the tail of his jacket and drew my Browning. “This is you.”
He tossed the gun in my direction. I caught it, ejected the magazine, checked it, slapped the magazine back in the butt. I pointed the Browning at Coley. Coley kept the. 38 on LaDuke.
“How’d you get in, LaDuke?”
“Fire escape. The window was open-”
“Damn,” said Coley.
“And then I just came down the hall. Heard you guys talkin’.”
“Good to see you, LaDuke.”
“You all right? You look pretty fucked up.”
“I’m okay. Now we gotta figure out how to get outta here.”
“ Uh- uh,” Coley said.
“What’s that?” LaDuke said.
“You know I can’t let you fellahs do that,” Coley said, still smiling, the smile weird and tight. Bullets of sweat had formed on his forehead and sweat had beaded in his mustache.
LaDuke took one step in. The floorboard creaked beneath his weight.
Coley stiffened his gun arm and did not move.
“Let’s get out of here, LaDuke.”
“Maybe you ought to run, Pretty Boy,” Coley said.
LaDuke’s face reddened.
“And maybe,” LaDuke said, “you ought to make a move.”
“LaDuke,” I said.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Know what this thirty-eight’ll do to that pretty face?” Coley said.
LaDuke just smiled.
Their eyes locked, and neither of them moved. The sound of our breathing was the only sound in the room.
“Hey, Jack,” I said, very qu sahe sietly.
Coley squeezed the trigger on the. 38 and LaDuke squeezed the trigger on the shotgun-both of them, at once.